Here’s this week’s question:

Coming towards the end of April, we’re a third of the way through the way through the year. What’s the favourite book you’ve read so far in 2009? What about your least favourite?

Wow! So far this year, I’ve read 26 books. In order to successfully complete my personal goal of 105 books read for the 100+ Reading Challenge, I need to have 36 books read by the end of this month to stay on target. Considering that would mean reading 10 books over the next two weeks, I’m going to say . . . I’ll need to play catch-up over the summer!

Though it’s a hard call, my favorite book read so far in ’09 has to be Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies [review here]. I’m absolutely in love with her writing. It’s so magical, lyrical and gorgeous, and I walk away from each of her books feeling changed. The Namesake, her first novel, gets the award for “favorite book ever, ever.” I have Unaccustomed Earth waiting patiently to be read . . . and I’m saving it, maybe for the plane ride to London.

My runner-up for best book read so far? Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief [review here], followed closely by Katherine Center’s Everyone Is Beautiful [review here]. All very different — all very awesome!

My least favorite book read thus far isn’t quite so hard to choose: definitely Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Anglophile [review here]. I went into it with such high hopes and was desperately disappointed by the flimsy characterization and pretty much hated the main character. I feel bad — I don’t want to bash the book. Honestly. But it was . . . awful.

Runner-up for book I really just wanted to quit reading but couldn’t? Beverly Jenkins’s Bring On the Blessings [review here]. Moments of okay-ness, but mostly just bor-ing. It was a review copy, so I tried to be as constructive and complimentary as possible . . . while still realizing I couldn’t praise the book without outlining my major problems with it. I guess that’s the making of a good book review right there!